Going home
Hadyn Green over at Public Address started a thread on Sport and is it Art nothing new except for once I wrote and wrote well - This is what I wrote.
I’m probably taking this waaaay to seriously however…..
Depends on whether Art is solely in the eye of the beholder, or the intent of the performer counts for something.
I can get with that and I would qualify it with this misquote from someone whom I can’t fully recall.
Art is what exists in the dialogue between the art-moment and the individual exposed to it. As such, each exposure is a unique art product. Unconstrained by specific intentions the artist may stimulate the process without necessarily defining it. Viewing with artistic intent is as important as viewing a de facto artwork or artist; this sees art as only requiring the intent of one or other of the involved parties. Hence art is what we experience where artistic intent exists on one or both sides of the dialogue; in this way the question is not who the artist is, but where the art is to be found or experienced.
I like this idea as it allows for art to be incidental and for distinctions between art, sport and craft to be largely irrelevant.
Randomness
For example it makes no sense to me at least, to draw an artificial line between the absorbed, involved manipulation of chaos demonstrated by Jackson Pollock and the absorbed liberation of action from apparent chaos demonstrated by Ronaldinho. There is a clear dyad between these artists and the complex changing forms that surround them, both of whom seem to be able to capture something sublime from apparent randomness.
Culture
Compare Picasso’s Guernica with Jesse Owens performances at the 1936 Olympics, you cannot separate these actions from the politics and complexity that surrounded them. Each in its own way was beautiful, profound, historical and dare I say it misunderstood at times.
Theatre
I challenge you to say the Valerie Villi’s actions in
Perfection
Here’s the one that clinches it for me. Look carefully at the deliberate, determined perfectionism of Yves Kline in his creation of IKB and that of a sprinter, thrower or diver. They seek perfection in clearly identifiable form through deliberate repetitive search only then to explore those forms in different contexts. More compellingly Klein wrote quite early in his career on “le Vide” (the void) an ethereal sense created by an artistic act. Compare this with accounts of “being in the zone” or “flow” and you get the sense that our artists and sportsfolk can and sometimes do occupy the same intellectual space in pursuit of particular goals.
So to be quite contrary Art is because I say soand that is what really matters.
Can't say this is original, I wrote it as a contribution to a thread over at Public Address - Someone paid me one of the kindest compliments I have ever received as a result. Its real and about as me as it gets, worth preserving then. Enjoy.
Peace on earth 1.
My father and I spent the day arguing I’m drunk, he’s barely conscious. We have guests. I’m laying the table, I drop a fork, he tells me to wash it, I reply “you f*****g wash it”. The guests have to restrain us both and someone else washes the fork. We sit to eat, I’m serving my father, doing it silver style, I twitch, purely by accident and cover him in overdone, quite mobile greens. He eyeballs me, I eyeball him and the room elects not to take any further breaths for the time being. Then I see what I think is the vaguest crinkle next to his recently greened eye. We both look to either side and I really can’t remember who started it. A smile, a chuckle, a giggle and then peals of tear busting, asthmatic provoking laughter; the spirit of Christmas brings peace for another day.
Peace on earth 2.
Still not over the breakdown of a 4 year relationship, feeling quite sorry for myself, I elected not to celebrate Christmas. I was nursing an extraordinary hangover having passed out at 7pm the day before. The house was freezing and I could not be bothered to connect up the new gas bottle, I crawled into bed instead. The phone rang three times; I decided not to be in. Then this awful banging on the door “Saes ! we know you’re in there - John and Della are coming to collect you in half an hour !”. John and Della owned a farm over the hill, Della had been my tutor at Uni, they are both the most decent committed Christians I know and I am about as atheist as they come. Failing to contact me by phone, they in that very North Wales way checked with my neighbours and got them to alert me instead. People like me don’t deserve friends like that. I don’t remember the meal or much of the following days. I do remember standing in an empty slate quarry with five companions singing Hymns and carols for all my voice, and what could be taken for a soul was worth. I can neither describe nor understand the peace that moment brought me.
A gift from my partner.
My partner gets my need for solitude which is a great comfort to me. One Christmas shortly after we first got together, we finished work on the evening of the 23rd, packed gear and drove from Sheffield to the northern highlands of Scotland. Late afternoon met our arrival at the bottom of a small range of Corbett’s and Munro’s I’d recce’d the year before. We did a night tramp for the first part, pitching out about two thirds of the way from the top of this particular peak. Christmas day from the camp looked a bit misty and not too bright, by eleven it had cleared just enough for us to photograph the wreck of a WW2 Wellington bomber. We could just see the peak and decided to have a go with what looked like quite a long zigzag route. As the ascent progressed the Sun came out and we went really fast, no words, just the crunch of snow and us. They call it a flow state and it was one of the most complete moments of my life. At the top I could see the range, the sea, my partner, two sets of tracks and not another living soul. Not the highest peak I’ve ever done and by no means the most difficult or indeed the most spectacular scenery, but it was mine. Only half the chocolate was mine though. It became clear at the peak that my partner was getting very cold very fast; with old gear not really up to the job, I cracked out my dry set and my partner doubled up layers. We set off downhill quite fast and made quite a wise decision at camp deciding to continue the walk off. I put my partner in the bothybag with a hot pack and pitched up. As we walked off a blizzard followed us all the way down to the tree line where we camped briefly and then carried on the then thick snow. Sat finally in a snowbound car I realised my partner who really hadn’t enjoyed the show, had given me one perfect Christmas day.
If Santa didn’t exist would we have to have had invent one anyway ?
My thoughts:
ii) This is in no way an anti-semitic gesture. This is about saying in plain language that
iii) This gesture needs to be put into the context or a request by Israeli academics to allow students in
iv) I hope this does open a real debate unencumbered by the anti-semite bleat. Time to take sides.
i) People who perpetrate such nastiness from behind a veil of anonymity are scumbags.
ii) Other mortals who take advantage of anonymity, have had to suffer the wrath of the self righteous and occasionally self serving blog community many of whom see no benefit in anonymity.
iii) The result has been a code of conduct for the blogsphere. This upsets me for two reasons: Firstly the code is unworkable but more worryingly the code represents an attempt to regulate instead of educate. This bothers me because I would have hoped for something more from the online community. A philosophy of freedom seems to have served the online community well, why give it up now?
iv) I don’t like being called a coward on account of the behaviour of others.
So why 81stcolumn ?
I have been 81stcolumn pretty much for as long as I have been on-line. The tag refers specifically to the extra column that appeared on old 80cloumn VDU’s. You only saw this column if the line was full of text and you couldn’t program it (I don’t think). It also laterally refers to 80 column programming cards – when a program appeared not to work for any obvious reason we used to talk about a stray bit in the 81stcolumn. Not surprisingly I was trying to create an air of mystery and grandness. After all, to know what the 81stcolumn is would be to indicate that you have been in computing for quite a while…..me trying to be a smart arse.
When I decided to attempt blogging I thought long and hard about whether it was reasonable to keep this ID up. I decided I would for several reasons;
I would like to keep my job and politics as far apart as possible. A large part of my job involves communicating with others. In these situations I have to appear to be capable of unconditional and non-judgemental acts. Consequently I didn’t want to have to discuss my politics in these situations or let my politics interfere with how others saw me. I just plain wouldn’t be able to work as effectively.
At the time when I made the decision there was some doubt as to whether I would be re-employed in my current role. Lack of employment would have meant having to leave my wife and my home. SWMBO probably puts up with enough as it is. At the same time I badly wanted to blow the whistle on what I saw as unethical and dare I say bullying practices at work. I hinted at some of this in this blog at the time. The process itself was helpful to me and kept me in my job long enough that I might be able to do something good in the future. I certainly stopped me form threatening to assault my bosses. I eventually made my point clear to my bosses later and that point to my surprise was well relieved and acted on. I honestly believe that my anonymous blogging was helpful at the time. Which brings me rather neatly to my next points.
The idea of blogging anonymously has served the world quite well when gaining a snapshot of life in
To underline this point whenever I have been “me” on-line it has caused me to question whether I should bother to be involved on line at all. The first time was in a school discussion board where the MSM picked up my name as someone who had been in contact with a known kiddie fiddler. No the guy had never touched me and no I did not want to discuss this further, an unpleasant surprise never the less. On a subsequent occasion, I was phoned and berated verbally by an anonymous contributor to another board, who had tracked me to my workplace to continue a disagreement he felt was unresolved on line. In both cases this would not have been possible had I used my pseudonym.
As someone who has been run-over, searched repeatedly, chased and beaten up for openly expressing my views face to face in public I see no reason to acknowledge an argument to do with my courage (or lack thereof) on-line. Maybe I’m just tired of being the one that gets flagged to be searched in airline checks etc. I know I grew tired of listening to a lot of unhappy people and getting the same government; then seeing a much smaller group of people at protests that had more verbal than material support. I think it most unfair to make presumptions of cowardice, based purely on the failings of others. It shows a complete lack of imagination to think that all anonymous users are “abusers by proxy” or “nastiness waiting to pounce”. I won’t buy into the macho call-you-out b******t as a response. A good read of my blog would identify me fairly accurately anyway.
I have offered to identify myself at my favourite discussion board over at PA. I am still trying to find a balance between the comfort of anonymity and blogging it real. Being scolded from a soapbox is unlikely to help. Besides I'm chronically self conscious in the presence of so many people on discussion boards who are clearly better informed and smarter than me…….
I met Alan on a Thursday night in March. He had lost the key to his motorcycle. He had lost it after competing in a local swim-run competition. We couldn’t find it in the dark. SWMBO and I offered him a lift home to get the spare he thought he kept in a box.
During the course of the search it seemed that Alan wasn’t the sharpest knife in the draw. Suspicions were confirmed during the ride home, the guy really wasn’t too bright. Never the less the conversation reminded me of a thing or two. Alan was in his thirties and he worked for a contractor the serviced
Alan works 55hours a week he works split shifts six until
Alan seems a happy enough bloke and quite reasonable with it, he didn’t complain once about his life. His circumstances became clear in a conversation about training and racing.
I am told it is a point of pride in New Zealand that "the Prime Minister gets to stand with the rest of us in the queue at the fish and chip shop". Sounds a bit hollow if some folks in the queue can only afford some to buy chips.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi
My point is that there is probably no such thing as objective science or pure unbiased facts as a result.
ii) Causality is difficult, hard and maybe impossible to prove -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
Which is why many settled for falsification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
However even this approach suffers because of the methods involved with falsification. Hence we should note that sceptics are often dealt the better hand in science and to some extent law. The sceptics mantra should read - If you don't like the facts start to pick at how they are created; failing that start on semantics and agreed truths.
iii) The theories we choose to apply and make use of are as much determined by mood of the time and history as they are by the basic business of scientific falsification.
Philosophy of Science in the Twentieth Century: Four Central Themes (Paperback) by Donald Gillies and work by TS Kuhn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn) still offer useful thoughts on this issue.
The point here is that we shouldn't be surprised if public policy is slow to change-scientific consensus is also really slow to arise.
iv) In some ways saying that you can understand research without having a grasp of stats and methodology is a bit like suggesting you should just kick the tyres before buying a car. Yep you can do it, but don't be surprised if what you get is unreliable.
Conclusion:
Nope there is no easy way to grasp this debate or evaluate the evidence within it. But usual rules apply; multiple sources, cross reference, check authority and agenda. Please be patient and persist with science and scientists it is tough turning squiggles and graphs into yes/no, good/bad right/wrong, and sometimes common language isn't good enough.
ii) Yes it really does cost a lot of money and I’m not just talking about the cost of the entry.
iii) I don’t know which is more painful the training or the weekly massage that is supposed to help me get over the training.
iv) I suspect I will understand pain a whole new way after race day.
v) I have no idea what makes me persist with this goal.
But for now it is time to sleep.
It doesn’t matter how angry I get with American foreign or indeed corporate policy my fury is tempered by the following things;
i) I visited a gallery in CA some 4-5 months after 9/11 with my then new wife. A curator, recognising that we were not Americans made a point of apologising to us for the bombings and what followed. I was deeply touched and reminded of the difference between
ii) One of my oldest and dearest friends is an American, a book editor by day and a liberal campaigner in her remaining hours. I should wish to have such determination.
iii) Rachel Corrie was an American. So was Jackson Pollock, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Andy Warhol………..
A lesson for us all and it seems the American government in particular. When being just one must choose one’s enemies with care…….
Where have I been ? Weeeeeell he said fiddling with his fingers I’ve been busy and neglectful. Occasionally work requires some long hours and just recently I have been giving time to others largely for their benefit. I have also managed to keep SWMBO happy which is good, but my infrequent rants have suffered. That said, this blog on Orgasms really did remind me of how valuable blogging can be.
The blog was an insightful hoot but I do think one or two points should be made.
1) So you really think men don’t notice faking ? I don’t dispute that older women may have got the better of me on this one, but younger ones are shocking….in fact so shocking they are boring. I may not be Don Juan or Casanova but I do think the two worst insults to my attempts at communicative sex are a) Epileptic routine – shaking like they belong in the bath with the washing only marginally better than……b) Dead fish routine – lay there and smile when he’s done.
2) Another cause of faking would be impatience – Yes some women are just too busy to wait…..I know I was bad but should she really look at her watch ? Another facet is the “me being used as a warm dildo”, I’m still not sure if that is a complement or an insult.
3) How did I figure it out a little of the orgasm thing ? I watched and got other women to show me….is that breaking the rules ? I am now a capable linguist at least.
4) In case you have never tried it, this I recommend - porn movies look hilarious played backwards at high speed. (Or maybe I was drunk at the time).
5) Yes the biggest source of sex education is the porn movie and porn mag. What I don’t understand is how blokes can figure that the penises are unreal but the sex isn’t…..can anyone help me out here ?
6) Not all Lesbians think like Jagose….
Yep I guess Kate’s right; its all about communication, that’s talking isn’t it ?….funny we can spend so much time talking about sex and failing to communicate. The talking is easy the truths are hard……mmmm there goes another platitude……..time for bed…
There are a lot of holocaust memorials but very few Genocide memorials. The Holocaust represents a unique and outrageous example of genocide. But genocide is indisputably what it is. To only recognize this instance of genocide(holocaust) is wrong and misleading. One might presume that such atrocities no longer occur, or indeed that they are unlikely to do so in the presence of such memories. Neither of these proposals makes any sense. In the first place as
Yes I know this is me, the anti Israeli loon but read this carefully and then shoot me. As it is, this is the sort of issue that needs reviving and discussing in a modern context.
A growing sense of anomie; I began to feel alienated within the country I had called, until then, home. It hurt me to see that most of the people I met defined themselves in terms of what they drove, what they owned and what they earned. It made me feel ashamed to be part of a society so superficial.
I am rarely seduced by ex-pat nostalgia. If fact it bloody well annoys and embarrasses me in equal measure. I go to
